President, IAEM Africa IAEM Africa Burlington, Ontario, Canada
As disasters become more frequent, complex, and protracted, emergency management continues to emphasize preparedness and resilience while often overlooking the structural conditions that determine who is protected and who remains exposed. This presentation introduces Institutional Neglect as a framework for understanding disaster risk as the cumulative outcome of patterned failures within governance, planning, and service delivery systems. Rather than treating vulnerability as inherent or pre-existing, Institutional Neglect reframes it as a product of institutional design choices that systematically exclude certain populations from protection and recovery. Drawing on interdisciplinary research and global perspectives, this session demonstrates how institutional neglect functions as an invisible form of disaster infrastructure, shaping exposure before hazards occur and constraining resilience during response and recovery. By examining overlooked pre-disaster spaces such as households, care systems, and informal living arrangements, the presentation highlights how risk is privatized when institutions fail to act. Aligned with the conference theme Charting through Preparedness: Anchored in Resilience, this session provides emergency managers with a practical lens to identify hidden risk factors, strengthen preparedness planning, and advance more equitable and resilient outcomes for vulnerable populations.
